Getting pdflatex to work inside a spap packge

[Dietmar Winkler]

Hi,

I'm currently trying to package my first snap package [1]. That
application depends on pdflatex which I included as stage package

    stage-packages:
      - texlive-latex-base

pdflatex can be executed but when an application from inside the snap
starts it it runs into trouble since pdflatex wants to access
/etc/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
which it cant.

It seems that the path "/etc/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf" is actually hard
coded in the pdflatex application. I tried things like setting the
TEXMFPATH but that does not have an influence.

I was wondering if there is a solution for this without rewriting the
source of pdflatex.

The more I'm working with snap packages the more I'm getting the
feeling that it has one fundamental flaw: containerising the
application but at the same time not automatically translating paths
to inside the container. This means that one has to tweak the original
source application in order to get it to work as a snap package. But
I'd say that the application should be totally oblivious to how it is
deployed.

-- 
/Dietmar/


[1] https://github.com/dietmarw/snaps/tree/master/ipe

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